“Will you be able to get that out by yourself?” Keith asked.
I hooked it with a claw and pulled it out.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, returning to look at the Activation and Setup guide.
The thing made it pretty simple. The hardest part was choosing an email address. I hadn’t the faintest idea of what to use for one. Keith had a few suggestions involving my name. I wasn’t sure about any of them.
Then an idea struck me, and I would have grinned if I could have. I used the stylus and wrote [email protected].
Keith rolled his eyes. “You’re never gonna let me live down that name, are you?” he said. When I had first come to live with Keith, he had called me by the dreadfully unimaginative name “Kitten” until I complained and asked him to come up with something better. It was still fun to tease him about.
I shook my head and tapped “Sign up” to claim my email address.
Keith decided he’d better head back out and see what everyone else was up to before they wondered why he was gone so long. Before he went, he put the rubberized protective case on my new phone so I could pick it up with my mouth and not harm it.
As soon as he had, that’s what I did. The rubbery case felt really weird—kind of nice, actually, on my teeth. Although, goodness knows it didn’t taste very appetizing.
I jumped down from the bed and hid underneath to compose my first email to Ms. Thornblood in privacy. I mean, can you imagine the way the little girls would squeal if they saw me writing an email?
I couldn’t believe how easy it was to go from handwriting to typed text! Ms. Thornblood was a genius! I told her so, too, in the email.
This was going to change everything.
Oh! And it gave me new ways to pester Keith! I looked around until I found something that would let me send a text message.
Hi, Keith! Make sure you don’t go sneaking off to town without me! ;) ;)
All my peskiness,
You-know-who
I snickered. This was going to be really fun.
Eleven
He didn’t sneak off without me. But he also didn’t answer my text message. Eventually, I quit playing with the phone and scooted out from under the bed.
“There’s the kitty!” cried Natalie, spying me in the hallway. “Uncle Keith! She must be done napping now!” She picked me up, saying in a tickly whisper, “Did you have a good nap? Mama says that’s what kitties are usually doing when they disappear for a while.”
I could not tell a lie... but neither could I talk, so it worked out.
“Uncle Keith, here’s Mia. Does she like car rides? Is that why you like to take her to town with you? Hero likes car rides. Except Mama doesn’t like him to ride in the car—just the truck—because he gets hair all over everything.”
Keith looked a little stunned by the chatter and blinked, trying to mentally keep up.
I didn’t bother trying. I thought about the dog and tried to picture him in color. I had only seen the black and white picture on the posters Dillon had made. He was a fluffy dog with what had to be light-colored fur. He had a sort of silly, lopsided grin on his face in the picture. Why was it that I couldn’t manage a smile and a not-so-bright dog could?
Oh, well. To each their own, I guess.
Keith had finally finished answering all of Natalie’s questions, so he took me from her and started to head toward the door.
I had this nagging feeling that we were forgetting something.
Oh, the cell phone. Did it really matter? Was I going to become one of those people who couldn’t go anywhere without their phone?
A vague uneasy feeling told me I just might need to bring it.
I jumped down from Keith’s arms and ran back down the hall to the guestroom.
I scooted under the bed and retrieved my phone. When Keith entered the room, I peeked out and gave it a little nudge toward him.
“Ah, so I have to be pockets for you now.”
You watch it, mister, or that will be your new nickname. Pockets. Heh. I liked that.
Nonetheless, he slid the device into his pocket and re-emerged, holding me again. We said our goodbyes and promised to keep in touch if we discovered anything new.
We drove back to town, past the street we’d visited earlier, and on up to where small farms mixed with rolling hills. As it was still technically part of the town, most of the houses were near enough to the roads that they could be seen easily.
We spent the next 45 minutes slowly checking for any signs of unusual activity or stolen dogs. From the road, everything seemed pretty normal, peaceful, and devoid of dogs. But then, what if he had the dogs indoors?
I had an idea. I pawed at Keith’s pocket until he handed me my phone. Checking first, to make sure nobody would see me, I send him a text message.
Why don’t I get out of the car? It’s not trespassing for a cat to sneak around. We do it all the time. If there are dogs in any of these houses, they’ll bark at me. You know how dogs are.
Keith thought for a moment and then nodded. "Okay, I guess it wouldn't hurt. Just be careful."
I nodded. Keith glanced carefully around the street to make sure nobody was in sight. Then he opened his door just enough to let me jump out.
I hurried to the nearest house. This one had a small area fenced as a backyard within the larger acreage. Nothing barked at me when I jumped to the top of the fence. Just as I thought, the yard was empty except for some children’s toys. I took my time wandering past the other houses, waving my tail high in the air in a way that would provoke most dogs to a deafening barrage of barking.
Sure enough, the third house barked. A white fluffy shape popped into view in the picture window in the front of the house. I assume the dog was looking at me as he continued his barking. It was hard to say, though. I certainly couldn't see his eyes through all the fluff. I suspected he couldn't see me all that well, either. I hung around for a few minutes until l was sure there wouldn't be any other dogs joining him.
Obviously not the house of the man who we suspected of three dog-nappings in the same day. And one a couple months before.
The next time I got barked at, I wasn't really sure what was going on at first. The house's screen door began to rattle and bang. Then, the sound the dog made was such a high-pitched squeak of a bark, I almost didn't recognize it.
This dog must be pretty small to have a voice like that. I crept closer to the door until I could see through the screen.
The dog was small. A little smaller than me—and almost looking like a cat with no hair. He also didn't seem very bright as he was repeatedly ramming the sturdy screen door. Did he think his head was so hard he could just burst his way out?
And then what would he do? Chase me up a tree? I snickered at the thought.
Yeah. Not likely.
I stalked off, leaving him to his frustrated frenzy.
By now I had done a lot of walking. Each of the lots in the Orchards were large—most an acre or two—so it was a good deal of effort to go door to door.
I paused in the driveway of the next house. I almost wondered why I was going to all this trouble for a dog. He'd probably spend the remainder of the visit chasing me if we happened to find him. But, no. I was doing this for the Thompson kids—for Dillon specifically. And also because, if there was a serial dog-napper on the loose like I suspected, he most certainly needed to be stopped.
I reached forward with my front paws to stretch my back, and then headed down the paved part of driveway. This house was quite large and tucked into the base of a hill. The people who owned this place were obviously well off. They probably drove zippy little sports cars and only came here part of the time to relax. My suspicions were confirmed when a sweep of the property showed everything neat, clean, and designer-y, but very much uninhabited at the moment.
As I headed back down the driveway, I wondered why they had only paved one side of it. It was almost as if there was another driveway—it was really
just ruts in the ground—running by its side. I turned and looked over my shoulder at how the paved driveway began to curve toward the house where it swept neatly past the grand front door.
But the ruts—another driveway, as I now realized—continued straight. I threw a glance back to where Keith was watching-without-watching, and then I turned to see where this path would lead.
Eventually the dirt driveway began to curve, and I realized it was going around the backside of the hill. As I followed it and came to where it ran straight again, I smelled it.
Oh, boy, did I smell it. It just about knocked me off my feet.
You're probably thinking it was bacon. Or goldfish.
It wasn't.
It was dog.
And lots of it. It didn't help any that there was a breeze blowing from the direction of the house tucked among the trees up ahead. Of course, this also meant I was downwind so they wouldn't smell me coming.
Which gave me hope they wouldn't alert the dog-napper to my presence.
I took a deep breath. I was pretty sure this was it. I called to mind the picture on the poster Dillon had made. It was time to go be Hero's hero.
Twelve
The closer I got to the house, the stronger the smell of dog became. Honestly, it was so strong it was almost overpowering the other, normal domestic smells I would expect. I was almost to the chain-link fence that surrounded the house, creating a secure yard.
I dropped to the ground and crawled stealthily forward between the trees and undergrowth to the left of the ruts, pausing every so often to sniff carefully and listen for any sign I'd been discovered. I got to the last of the cover before the clearing around the house and stopped.
Slowly, I raised my head just barely high enough to see past the undergrowth.
The house was small and yellow, with tidy white trim. It looked perfectly quaint and adorable.
Except for the fact that the entire yard was full of dogs.
Yes, full.
I hadn’t just found the few dogs I was looking for. I saw dogs of every breed, color, and size. I ducked down, blinked hard, and shook my head to clear it just in case I was imagining things.
But when I peered up at the scene, again, all the dogs were still there. It was totally, completely true. And it was apparently dinner time, too. All these dogs had their noses buried in food bowls. There was a little growling and scuffling, but they were being surprisingly well-behaved.
And then I saw why.
A little, thin man sat cross-legged on the ground in the middle of the yard, a look of child-like delight on his face as he looked at all the dogs around him.
Whenever there would be too much growling or scuffling, he would call out something like, "Now, Fluffy One, don't act that way. Let Yappy One get her dinner, too."
Fluffy One? Yappy One? As I listened a bit longer, I realized he had similar descriptive names for each dog in the hard. He must have given them all his own names since he didn't know the names their owners have given them.
Or, I thought, as I watched him contentedly munching something as the dogs finished their dinner, they could all be his. Who said a man couldn't own more than 15 dogs, anyway? Surely such a mild person couldn't be the infamous dog-napper I had pictured.
Although, that many dogs certainly would make it impossible to own a pair of pants not covered in dog hair.
But still, they could all be his own—
I was trying really hard to keep an open mind.
And then I saw him. The dog from Dillon's poster raised his head from a nearby bowl and licked his chops noisily.
Yikes. He was a lot bigger than he'd looked in his picture!
But if Hero was here... there was no longer any doubt in my mind that—as mild and sweet as he was—this little man must be the dog-napper. I had just turned to scamper back and tell Keith of my discovery when a smell managed to waft up over the dogginess and make my mind tingle.
For the first time, I focused on the snack in the man's hand.
It was orange and crunchy. And that smell was definitely goldfish.
Before I knew it, the smell had somehow taken over my brain and tugged me from my hiding place.
There was a split second of absolute, terrifying silence as what seemed like hundreds of dog eyes stared at me in surprise.
Then, with almost one, deafening voice, they all began barking and howling and crashing against the chain-link fence.
With a hiss, I fled back through the trees, low and fast, ears pinned back. I mentally berated the goldfish for smelling so ridiculously good. I couldn't believe I'd blown my cover like that.
As I rounded the base of the hill, I almost tripped Keith who was racing in the opposite direction.
"Wait! Mia!" he said, skidding and making a clumsy about-face.
I didn't wait for him, but kept running until I reached the car.
Panting, he joined me a moment later. "I take it you found some dogs?" We could still hear them barking and howling from the other side of the hill.
Thirteen
As soon as Keith opened the car door, I jumped inside and over to the passenger's seat where my cell phone lay. I tugged the stylus from the end, scrawled out a text message, hit send, and waited for Keith to read it.
Why was he taking so long to read it—or re-read it? Twice? I was twitching with impatience.
Finally he looked up at me, a puzzled expression on his face. "What do you mean the yard is full of deer? Is the guy a poacher?"
I stared at him, and I think my mouth dropped open. What on earth was he talking about? Hadn't I been clear in my text message? I tapped around with the stylus until the sent message came up on the screen.
There's a little house back there. A man lives there. The yard is absolutely full of deer. I saw Hero!
Deer? Deer?
I began a new text message, writing more carefully this time. When I came to the word "dogs," I saw one of the autocorrect options was "deer."
This time I read through the message before sending it:
Sorry. What I meant to say was "dogs." The yard is absolutely full of dogs. Silly autocorrect.
Keith laughed out loud when he got the message on his phone. "Welcome to the world of overly-helpful technology!" he said. Then he immediately sobered up. "I'm going to send a text message to my sister and let her know what's going on. Then I'm calling the police."
In a few moments, he dialed the local police department. He explained to them that he thought he had discovered where all the missing dogs were. "They seem to have been collected by a man living tucked way back in the Orchards. Yes, I'm nearby now; on Braeburn Drive. I'll wait right here. That's correct. Keith Thompson. Okay, great."
He ended the call and said, "Well, they're on their way. We'll wait here and when they arrive, I'll show them where to go."
I narrowed my eyes and began writing on my phone.
But you don't know where to go. We have a little time. I'll go down there again and text some pictures to show you the best approach. Who knows what a crazy man who collects other people's dogs might decide to do if he realizes he's about to be arrested!
"But all those dogs—" Keith protested.
They're in the yard, they’ve quit barking, and they won’t see or smell me coming. Open the door, please?
It was the least I could to do to regain my dignity. And, besides, if Keith and the officers didn't know the best way to approach the house, this thing might get a whole lot more complicated. I picked up my phone, gripping the rubbery case with my mouth, and looked at Keith expectantly. He opened the door.
As I scampered down the first part of the driveway, I began to wonder just what the little man would do. What if he was armed? He seemed pretty nice, but he did dog-nap who-knows-how-many dogs. Or what if he decided to let all the dogs go so there wouldn't be any evidence? Then they'd really be lost!
As I rounded the base of the hill, I paused to take a picture of the brushy driveway and the copse of trees up
ahead. I added it to a message to Keith.
This is just after you go around the hill. The house is just through the clump of trees to the left of the driveway. You might want to stay to the left of the driveway as you continue so the trees keep you hidden from the house.
I sent the message, picked up my phone, and continued down the driveway. I passed through the trees and positioned myself in my former location. I slowly raised myself above the undergrowth.
What I saw worried me.
A lot.
Fourteen
The bad news is, there are only 9 or 10 of the biggest dogs left in the yard. The good news is, one of them is Hero. I’m going to investigate further.
I sent this message to Keith.
I raised my nose and sniffed carefully. The direction of the breeze was still in my favor. I took a deep breath and ventured, one stealthy, slinking step at a time, from my hiding place. I stayed in the shadows cast by the trees, hoping my dark, tabby coloring would camouflage me a bit. The dogs would neither smell me nor see me—if I was careful.
My progress was achingly slow. Take a step. Freeze. Take another. Freeze.
Finally, though, I was as close to the house and yard as I dared. I stared for a full minute, looking for any signs that I had been discovered. When I was satisfied the dogs were minding their own business, I snapped another picture.
A view of the house and yard. Can you believe I snuck this close without being discovered? I'm still not sure where all the other dogs went. Hopefully he didn’t let them go.
I looked to the left of the house where the man's truck was parked. That would give me some cover to sneak around back. Unfortunately, the tree shadows didn't reach that far.
A moment later, a squirrel ran across the rain gutter of the house and distracted the dogs just long enough for me to make a mad dash for the nearest truck tire.
Thank you, squirrel.
I watched the dogs from behind the truck tire until I thought they weren't looking. Then moved again. Nobody had seen me yet. I couldn't believe it!
The Kitten Files, Season One Page 7